New proposals

The second research proposal from @permabullnino (first proposal) requests $16,000 to cover 8-10 months of work, continuing the themes from the first phase but with more varied outputs. Long-form posts will be reduced in response to feedback from phase 1, with more medium-length posts and a monthly newsletter that provides updates produced with already established tools. @permabullnino reports an average monthly spend from phase 1 of $1,900, and projects a monthly spend of $1,600-$2,000 for phase 2. @permabullnino also reports that he has started automating the deployment of his existing tools and offers a repository where these can be found.

Comments are generally supportive, although @goodriver makes a verbose argument against the proposal across a number of lengthy comments, in a back and forth with @permabullnino and @checkmate that also spills over to the Decred OnChain proposal.

This proposal requests $7,800 to develop an MVP Decred charting site, the MVP would have 5 live chart types with associated explanatory texts. The selection of charts is based on @permabullnino and @checkmate’s research, and the charts would be linked to their papers on the relevant subjects. Also on the team are @nachito and @pablito (of DCRComic, working on design), @svitekpavel (developer) and @stan (UX & Product). Design of the site has already begun, and some wireframes and other assets are included in the proposal.

Decred On Chain Design Guide

The proposal aims for 12 week delivery, and the budget would be split between design ($3K) and development ($4.8K). The work on specifying the charts would be completed as part of @checkmate’s already approved proposal, which has a budget of $2.5K for this kind of activity (although originally intended to be integrated in dcrdata).

This proposal enjoyed a remarkably positive and highly upvoted comment from @praxis, which praised it for its competent team, low asking price and developed concept. There were positive comments from some other well known contributors, and some negative comments from less familiar personas.

This proposal offers to produce either a 2 ($39K) or 6 ($110K) part series of 7-12 minute interviews, to be broadcast by FMW TV’s broadcast network. The proposal contains a lot of numbers, maybe more than any other proposal, but it is not clear how relevant some of them are. Claims like “TV exposure has the potential to increase… token price +901%” have been identified as raising red flags by several commenters, and questions have been asked about whether the high profile TV channel names being dropped are reflective of what would be delivered. So far there are no responses from the proposal owner.

In this proposal David Stancell requests $1,000 USD as sponsorship of a book publication. The book is about the history of cryptocurrencies and will feature a limited mention of Decred in the altcoins section. If the proposal is approved the Decred logo and link would appear as a sponsor of the book on its website. David is also seeking funding from other sources, and estimates that he will need around $8,000 to publish the book. In response to a comment David suggested the book may be open sourced in future, but this was not part of the immediate plan. Two early chapters of the book are available on its website.

Early comments asked about David’s views on Decred and whether he has looked into the project, and how prominently it will feature in the book and on the website. The initial version of the proposal did not include any amount or terms but it was quickly edited to add these. David has been responding to questions and is considering dropping the ask to $500, and also looking at which other aspects of Decred might be relevant for the book as he learns more about the project.

This proposal requests $46,000 to continue (previous proposal) the pandemic-attenuated activities of the Latam team for 6 months. It provides an in depth account of the concluding phase, which saw all events being cancelled. The Latam team have paid deposits up front for some events, which will be carried over to whenever the event can resume. The proposal reports spending of $82,072.38, which is $10K over the first proposal’s budget of $72K. A version of the proposal on GitHub has tables with detailed breakdowns of spending on the proposal.

The Latam team have shifted focus to online activities, and for the next phase plan to focus on the creation of a number of Spanish media products: a monthly translation of Decred Journal and video version, 2 monthly #HablemosDecred community calls, 2 monthly crypto 101 shows and 1 monthly ad-hoc panel. Other areas of focus going forward are public relations and enhancing Decred’s presence in Spanish crypto media, as well as developer recruitment, academic awareness and user support. The proposal team have put out a video about the proposal.

Comments on the proposal are almost universally positive, except one that points to relatively flat social media metrics and calls shenanigans.

Other news

Check out the segment of the Decred Consensus program with @lukebp talking about Politeia.

In the ChangeLog segment of the program @jy-p gave an update on the decentralization of Treasury spending work by @moo31337, and also presented some Treasury spending figures.

Decred Contractor Clearance support in the CMS is reaching maturity with a big chunk of work from @ay-p being merged, as tweeted by @lukebp. Several DCCs have already been granted but the process of collecting approvals has had some rough edges until now.

The Decred bi-weekly news update from @Exitus has coverage of the same Politeia proposals considered above in video form, plus updates from across the project.